


your hand in mine

by littlelionvanz



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Inspired by Music, remember when you heard that one song fo the first time that made you feel alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 18:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2161209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelionvanz/pseuds/littlelionvanz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was seventeen when he met people that loved him. </p><p>He’s eighteen, sitting in his car, listening to some song on the radio that’s telling him it’s okay to feel it now. For the first time, he feels it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your hand in mine

**Author's Note:**

> [please listen while reading.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdiY6kijYHE)

The heat is dying, fall is coming and he can smell it. The windows are down and the wind is cold around him, flooding through the car and him in waves. The sun is setting over Henrietta when Adam drives home from work, a work shift cut short. A sort of tired that settled deep into Adam’s bones but nothing unusual that he wasn’t already used to. It had been an uneventful day, an uneventful week. (An addition to an uneventful life). A constant routine of school, work, study, sleep in a rotating cycle with small intervals of quiet in between each of those periods.

He presses a button on his radio - sometimes there’s luck and the radio waves connect and the tail end of some aging rock ballad plays through. There are some Adam knows, mainly from hearing it a few times on the radio, one of three stations that work, and others he doesn’t. It mostly gets tuned out as white noise after a while. Songs bleed together and it’s hard to tell them apart. Ask Adam Parrish his favorite song and with painful honesty, he’d tell you he doesn’t know.

The first announcing notes of a guitar begin and Adam is waiting for the pained lyrics of an aging rockstar and the one that got away, but none come. It’s simple, really. It’s telling him to listen. It’s saying, Adam open your _eyes_.

Suddenly the sun is brighter. Something makes him turn the silver knob to make it louder, just as the sharp snare drum accents in the back.

_ Listen, Adam. _

There are no words, no lyrics but it doesn’t need any. Adam is listening and his heart is beating faster, echoing in his lungs and through his chest, radiating through his fingertips and warming his face. The drums stop quickly with a smash on the cymbals.

That guitar part begins again, the simple quiet melody that suggests sadness but Adam _feels_ something else.

_ This is it, Adam. _

He grips the wheel tighter, his eyes tightening, he feels something heavy in him when the guitar strings him along and he’s unable to stop his heart from following. It picks up gradually, him along with it. The air around him seeps into him making him feel more awake than he can remember being _ever_. His ears are burning with the buzzing, the distant drums demanding refuge in him.

Suddenly everything around him is more vibrant and he _sees_ it - the pale yellow grass of the fields on both sides of the asphalt, glowing in its magnificence from the sun. Pink, white, yellow, and blue blown over the sky in patterns like memories and this is him. Driving in a shitty car down a numbered highway, listening to some song that’s making something inside his chest explode. Something he can’t place a name on because it’s something he can’t remember feeling.

It _feels_ like, sounds like, and tastes like freedom. It feels like being eighteen and alive. It’s beautiful.

He feels. He feels something clinging onto him, not pulling him down but breaking his chest open for the sunlight to reach in where before it was locked in the dark. So this is what it feels like to be alive. To be in this wide vast world that before, Adam could only dream about leaving.

There’s something in his throat that makes him want to scream because he’s alive and he suddenly knows that. He’s Adam Parrish, he wants to tell someone. And for the first time, he realizes that he’s here. He might be alone at that present moment, but it doesn’t matter because _he is here_. Beneath the warm glow of twilight, amidst cracked leather, the smell of gasoline, and a stack of books.

The drums and guitar are louder now, growing and growing as he slows down and pauses on the side of the road. He doesn’t know what makes him do it, he just does. The road is empty, just him and the sun, and the fields. The song slows to, back to that melody

 _You are here, Adam_.

He leans his head back, and closes his eyes. He thinks of his friends. And he knows that he loves them now. He feels that love permeating through him and he’s glad for it.

He’s thinks about Gansey. Sometimes he forces himself to think of flaws, especially when he’s mad with him but he can only think about his easy smile. He thinks about how easy it is to love Richard Gansey III. How impossible it is not to; his passion, the endearments. He thinks about the love Gansey gives him expecting nothing in return. He thinks about a life without Gansey and he realizes he doesn’t want it. He thinks about the Pig and mint leaves, old books and summer. He thinks about that day he stopped to help him on the side of the road.

He thinks about Blue. He loves Blue with an ache that leaves his stomach feeling heavy. He thinks about the odd patterns of her skirt, the thousand and one barrettes that decorate her hair, he thinks about wanting to hold her close to his chest just to say sorry. He thinks about how glad he is that he decided to talk to her that night outside Nino’s, and how he couldn’t imagine a life without her either. He thinks about the beautiful odd-ness of 300 Fox Way and the family within. 

He even thinks about Noah and how there’s not a creature in the world like him. He’s sorry for what he is, how he’s forced to exist, but in a part of his heart, Adam feels grateful that they found him and that they keep him. And there’s a pang of luck, what are the chances of ever knowing another Noah Czerny ever again. His careless abandon and painful sadness and remarkable innocence. He knows there will come a day when Noah will have to go, but for now, he’s glad he ever got to know him.

Ronan. There’s a sudden awareness of Ronan Lynch that hadn’t been there before. Like a rush and flash and a _yeah, of course_ -ness about realizing Ronan. He feels it in his chest, blooming from inside and to his fingertips and all he can do is smile because, _of course_. He thinks about him and thinks about him and thinks about everything he is. Damaged, cheeky, fucking beautiful, and soft. He’s heat lightning on a summer night; an empty threat that suggests danger but you dare to look closer and you just feel this overwhelming sense of security and connection to _something_.

With the sudden crescendo of drums and climax of the song bursting around him, he feels it now. Ronan’s eyes on the back of his neck when he thinks Adam didn’t notice (because at the time he didn’t care to think about it). He thinks about playing on that stupid dolly, learning how to drive a stick, and being idiots. He thinks about cursing and the rent and that thing Ronan does with his mouth when he thinks no one is looking. He thinks about how hard his chest is exploding and he covers his mouth to hide that smile that tells himself, he wants to Ronan to be in this car with him right now to hold his hand. He wants to feel those fingers between his, feels their heartbeats press together against palms. Adam wants to share this aliveness with him, give it to him,  like some grand discovery. To say, _yes I feel it now. I finally fucking feel it. Can you?_ And he hopes that Ronan will get what he means.

The song is ending and he’s buzzing and smiling.

Adam Parrish doesn’t remember seven years old. He doesn’t recall twelve. Ages fourteen to sixteen are a blur. They fade together like phantom years lost in a closet of pain and suffering and worth forgetting because what else is there.

He was seventeen when he met people that loved him.

He’s eighteen, sitting in his car, listening to some song on the radio that’s telling him it’s okay to feel it now. For the first time, he feels it.

He feels loved and loving and awake and awoken and aware and here.

_The earth is not a cold dead place._

_Because you are here._

_Because you are listening._

**Author's Note:**

> The last three lines come from the vinyl album, where the title (and the song that Adam listens to) comes from. The name of the album is called, _The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place._ Etched on one record, it reads, _beacuse you are here_ , and on the other, _because you are listening._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] your hand in mine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5586556) by [growlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery)




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